Pulling out the river gear ...

At last.

Got on the river a couple of times this past weekend, finally moving the Summer (in the broad, six-month-long season sense) from the getting-the-gear-out stage to the getting-out-with-gear phase. At last!

(Read about my affection for that Spring ritual of pulling out gear in "Getting in Gear," this month's "San Juandering" column, in the June Inside Outside. )

On Saturday some friends and I took my niece and her husband on a rollicking paddle run through town. The river had peaked that morning, at 5,100 cfs. It was a wet, fast, and rockin' ride -- and my niece's husband's first-ever river trip. A good one, fer sher.

And on Monday, a slice of our river-trip tribe gathered for a duckie trip down a little-run section of our home river, paddling the Animas from Baker's Bridge to Trimble Lane. This lovely, riffly, meandering stretch features big cottonwoods, sweeping views of the redrocked upper Animas Valley and upstream toward Engineer Mountain and surrounding still-snowfielded peaks. We also passed the confluence of Hermosa Creek and the Animas.

Let Summer roll!



Read "Getting in Gear" here.

Check out some pics of the Baker's Bridge to Trimble Lane run on the Animas River here.